I was on the bus and it occurred to me there was a passage about landscape, storytelling and lying that struck me and though I forget the exact quote and won't go back to find it, I am provoked to think about how it is so easy to trust nature and the landscape, that truth and language are not so much an issue or required; that there is no real question posed about being. We do not fear an unfaithfulness in nature's utterances. And further finding myself on the bus reading this, it occurred to me too how safe such an allegiance (to the driver)is. I do not have to worry about the reckless acts of others[...] But once the contemporary human begins to orate directly upon us, faith and our footing fail us. We are dragged along upon someone else's tilting, winding path, only hoping not to find ourselves upon a precipice gazing down in a singular lack of togetherness with the ground. We find ourselves in a kind of cordial free-fall without any hope of landing softly; there are only cacti and vultures waiting for the ultimate failure of lingual competence between antagonists. The landscape on the other hand is a truly sound protagonist; there is no doubting it, for it has no intention but acts as it will, as it must, and we can be comforted all along as we are nearly swept off the earth at the same time by natural disaster or the failure of aging organs...
I have faith that one day I will be taken back into this grand scheme. Therein my true faith resides. Not in human nature, that is, not at least as we have misunderstood it to be. We choose as we progress, and therefore even reason fails us in this way: being choice at all it goes against nature!
Mr. Lopez has privileged us with a close view of his direct and very personal contact with a landscape I feel I could love were I fortunate enough to be an outdoors person. Such is story telling: a privileged impossibility.
No comments:
Post a Comment